


Hold me down

by Liliania



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Is Trying His Best, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Joseph Kavinsky/Ronan Lynch, REALLY MINOR, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Trauma, sleep deprived Adam Parrish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25032544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liliania/pseuds/Liliania
Summary: “Is this God?” He’s drunk and Adam shudders. He doesn’t say anything, hoping Ronan will just let go. Of course, he doesn’t. Ronan crosses the street and stands above Adam, unsteady on his feet. “Adam Parrish,” he says, sounding surprised.“Only Adam Parrish, unfortunately,” he answers in a hushed voice because it’s the middle of the night and he’s not drunk to not care about the silence.“That is good enough."(In which Ronan has issues and decides he wants help from a boy he barely knows, and Adam is just too tired to deal with him)
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 6
Kudos: 121





	Hold me down

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning for eating disorders, past suicide attempt and self-harm (nothing graphic, all of this is just mentioned)  
> Also Noah is alive in this one

He was the first person that Adam noticed in Aglionby, so out of place in a pristine classroom where everything is new and expensive and pretty in this style that’s straight out of a magazine. His uniform is wrinkled, first buttons of his shirt undone and sleeves rolled, feet in combat boots on the desk, and curly hair loose around his sharp face. He doesn’t look bad, though, even though he probably wants to; no, he still looks rich but in a way that shows he puts so much effort into trying to look like _he’s not._ And that infuriates Adam, who’s standing in the doorway in his second-hand clothes and hair badly cut; not on purpose, but because he had to do it himself above his bathroom sink. 

And he looks up at him and his bland expression changes. He _smirks_ and Adam wants to kill him, even more when it turns out he pays no attention in the useless Latin class and is still good, the best out of all them. 

He sees him semi-regularly and notices how many classes he skips; maths, almost always, history and English very often and Latin, on rare occasions. He’s usually alone, obviously carefully creating the independent asshole image, because, as Adam quickly notices, there are two boys following him that he seems to like, the affection noticeable only in comparison to how he treats the rest of the student body. Those two seem to match the school a lot better, one petite blond with big eyes and the other one, son of a politician and painfully polite all the time. 

Adam feels pathetic watching him but there’s nothing better for him to do, none of the boys interested in getting to know him, not that he wants them to. He’s fine on his own, always has been, and there’s no way he’d fit with any of the groups here. It’s painfully obvious that he can’t answer their questions with stories about spending holidays with his drunk father in Henrietta or how his hobbies are non-existent, because there’s no time for that between his three jobs and homework, so they let him be after he barely responds. 

So that leaves him with watching Ronan, only for the fact that he can get mad at him for wasting opportunities Adam would kill to have. 

There are times when he catches Adam staring. The scowl that’s on his face all the time changes into a smirk. Adam can feel his gaze on the back of his head for a few minutes after he turns in panic. 

***

Ronan vanishes suddenly. He stops appearing for a week and Adam even gets the ridiculous idea to ask Gansey or Noah but never actually does, deciding it’s better to pretend he never noticed the guy in the first place, not more than any of his other classmates. He never talked with him anyway, so it shouldn’t matter, and the only reason he even noticed him was because of how out of place he was here, almost as much as Adam himself. 

He stops paying attention after three weeks. There’s too much work, Adam’s tired all the time, and then there’s the “accident” which leaves Adam half-deaf, homeless, and out of school for at least a week. He doesn’t press charges, worried it may leave him even worse off than with a beaten face and permanently damaged hearing. Instead, he stays for two nights in the motel and then manages to find a room to rent, which is the cheapest but also the shittiest option in the whole town. 

Maybe it will be his origin story. He imagines the future where he can afford an actual apartment with the money he earns in a nice job, far away from Henrietta. In his imagination, there’s no grease staining his clothes and he doesn’t have to buy the cheapest soap. And he sleeps seven hours every night.

He almost forgets about him altogether, but then Ronan comes back, three months later, as if nothing ever happened. Adam stops, surprised, and at the first glance, he thinks it’s somebody else, another punk wannabe student to fulfill the position of the school rebellious asshole. His head is shaved, making him look even more dangerous and unapproachable, and he’s thinner, collar bones jutting out from the unbuttoned collar. Adam blinks when he notices black ink on his neck, creeping down his shoulders under a white shirt. 

For once, the sleeves are rolled down. 

Noah is sitting on his desk, feet on Ronan’s chair, chatting and trying for the carefree tone, but Gansey’s unable to show his worry, quite unlike his usual self and his brows furrowed. Ronan shakes off his hand when he reaches for his leather band on his wrist and Noah falters for a moment before he picks up his story exactly where he left. Adam’s close enough to hear him talking about some legend, too obscure for him to know. He heard them talking about it before, although not for the last few months, and each time Ronan was interested in the story, filling sometimes with his suggestions. 

Now he’s sitting quietly, eyes on Noah’s lap but unfocused as if he’s far away from them. Adam recognizes his expression, pain visible on his face, and his mind far away from the body. Other students stay away from him and Adam briefly thinks of asking somebody what happened to Ronan, but it's a stupid thought. He never talked with him, never even introduced himself. 

He hoped Gansey would mention anything about the boy. They do talk sometimes, mostly about school, but Gansey’s polite and at least tries to act interested in Adam’s life after asking about homework (not that Adam makes getting to know him easy) and in return sometimes mentions stories about Noah or his family. Never about Ronan, though. 

Maybe it's better this way. Adam has enough trouble on his own. There are essays due that he writes in the middle of the night and tests that he has to study for in the brief moments when there are no customers waiting for him, bills that he has to pay and the fact that he left his winter shoes at his parents’ home and it's getting cold in sneakers. And he has a headache, which at this point is a constant thing, probably from his chronic lack of sleep and straining his eyes to read in the dark. He almost wants to laugh at the tragedy that is his life, because it feels almost unreal how unfortunate he is. 

Adam turns his head and catches Ronan staring at him. His eyes are pure ice, unsympathetic, and looking out of place on his face, blank. And he doesn't shy away, just stares at Adam with curiosity, as if he was looking at an interesting exhibit in a museum until Adam turns to look at his textbook with shame. Just another time he’s stared down on. 

***

“Can you fix that?” 

Adam raises his head. He’s on a break, technically, as Ronan should realize, seeing that he was chewing on a sandwich and reading a physics textbook. He raises his eyebrows at him and then cranes his neck to look behind. There’s a dent in the hood of his BMW. 

“Boy, again?” Adam turns around to see his boss staring at Ronan, his arms crossed. Adam raises his eyebrows even higher. How often does he do it? Even more important, why does he own a car like that if he drives so carelessly? “What this time?”

Ronan turns his head and mumbles something. Adam stares at him, changed out of school uniform, in a black tank top and ripped jeans looking so worn Adam wonders if he bought them ripped or it’s an effect of his carelessness. He looks even more dangerous now, with his tattoo poking out of the shirt, making Adam wonder how big it is. He can imagine it running low, marking the skin of his whole back. It’s probably his first tattoo, but Ronan strikes him as a person likely to get such a big piece without any previous experience. 

“You should be more careful,” Boyd says, glaring at Ronan with a warning. “With whatever it is that you’re doing,” he adds in a tone indicating he knows well what Ronan is doing. 

“Yeah, probably.” Ronan then turns to look at Adam. He instantly braces himself for a confrontation, even if it’d probably just bar a demeaning look, seeing that it's Ronan, who might as well be mute for all that Adam knows. Nothing like that comes. Ronan stares at him with an expression that’s an attempt at acting bored and indifferent, but Adam knows this exact type all too well. There’s tiredness there's no way of denying it when his eyes are sunken and the skin is violet with visible veins, but it’s more than just the lack of sleep. He looks incredibly sad.

Maybe he’s just seeing things that aren't there because he wants them to be, he can't be sure. It's weird how comforting it can be knowing you're not the only one feeling this bad, listless, and screaming wildly in your head, _anguished._ Adam feels pathetic just thinking about this, he hates wallowing in self-pity and even more wishing it upon somebody else just to feel solidarity. 

“See you at school.” Ronan’s hoarse voice gets him out of his head. He wasn't listening. Boyd moved to look at the car now. He’s too surprised to do anything more than a shrug. 

***

He hasn’t seen Ronan at school, despite what he told him, for over a month. Didn’t see him anywhere around either, although that can easily be explained by the fact that Adam doesn’t go out much. He even suspects the boy decided to drop out, he never seemed like a passionate student, but it’s mostly because he doesn’t want to think about other unfortunate things that may have happened to him. 

His heart almost bursts out of his chest when he sees him at Nino’s. It’s pathetic, really, but he probably worries about Ronan’s well being more than his own ( _for sure you do_ , he admits while pouring himself a fourth cup of coffee that day, _not that it’s hard),_ or maybe that’s just pure curiosity. He never felt this way before, always too busy with his problems, but maybe being a bit too invested in somebody’s life is normal. Is that what people do with celebrities? Is that far fetched to treat Ronan as one? He might as well be, with the attitude, money, how unreachable he is. 

“Ronan.” Gansey’s voice is mild, but there’s an edge to it like he’s already had that conversation before and is trying with all his power not to lose patience. 

“For fuck’s sake, Gansey, I told you I already ate.” Ronan, on the contrary, isn’t hiding his annoyance. The sleeves of his jacket roll down when he puts his hands on his head, hiding his face with a sigh, and Adam raises his brow when he spots a pale pink scar tissue peeking from behind his leather bands. 

Gansey sighs. “I’m ordering for you, too.” Ronan raises his head to glare at him, then he turns. Adam feels his eyes piercing him, icy blue and so cold, like nothing Adam’s ever seen. His skin is paper white now and it makes dark circles under his eyes more prominent. 

“How many jobs are you working?” he asks. There’s no mockery in his voice, but he might have as well laughed in Adam’s face. 

“Don’t mind him,” Gansey mutters, and that’s exactly what Adam does.

“That’ll be all?” he answers in a cold tone. He tries for intimidating, but it must be working poorly because Ronan smirks. Adam wants to strangle him. 

Blue pats him on the shoulder when he comes back with their orders. “I hate raven boys,” she says sympathetically. Adam laughs bitterly. 

“I’m a goddamn raven boy,” he says, but he knows what she means: _I hate rich boys that sit there talking about their holidays in Spain while you serve them pizza to pay for the shitty room._ He wants to say he hates them too, but she sees right through him when he does, raises her brows in a silent mockery, because she knows how much he wishes that would be him one day: rich, dressed in expensive clothes, tan from his trip to some island in the middle of the winter. When she says it, she means it; Blue and all her ideals, that she’ll proudly tell you dressed in clothes from Goodwill, not in the least ashamed of it. When he agrees with her, it’s bullshit stemming from jealousy and how hard he aches to be somebody else, even though he knows he’ll never match the crowd he wants to be a part of. 

“And? I never said I didn’t hate you,” she says, a smile tugging at her lips when she tries to pretend not to look at him, busy at the register. Adam laughs and cuffs her on the head playfully, his mood already slightly better. 

Ronan’s watching him from the other end of the room, sipping unsweetened green tea and ignoring Noah and Gansey. Adam’s laughing, lighting up like he’s never seen him do before. Ronan’s jealous, even knowing he has no right to be seeing as he can’t talk to the boy without saying something mildly offensive. 

Ronan’s ridiculous is what he is. He wants to hug Adam and feed him nice food and tell him to please, have some rest. He mostly wants to stop being angry for three seconds without any real reason.

***

Cool air hits Adam, makes him feel fresh after hours spent in a hot room. He’s sticky with sweat and his eyelids are heavy, he rubs them until stars appear. 

He’s tired. The stone steps of the church are cold beneath him, he presses his palms to them, wants to lay there and go to sleep. He’s tired and his back hurt and his head is so heavy, on the verge of headache from the lack of sleep. It’s Saturday and he doesn’t even think about the fact that he spends it alone, again, lonely and tired, so tired, too tired to fall asleep. The church bell will wake him up in six and a half hours. 

“The fuck are you doing here?” 

He raises his head. There’s a person, standing on the other side of the road, propped on a street lamp. His voice, harsh and slurred, sounds weird in the quiet of the night. Out of place. Adam can see him smirking, white teeth, and unhealthily pale skin visible in the dark of the night. The lamp turns on. 

“Is this God?” He’s drunk and Adam shudders. He doesn’t say anything, hoping Ronan will just let go. Of course, he doesn’t. Ronan crosses the street and stands above Adam, unsteady on his feet. “Adam Parrish,” he says, sounding surprised. 

“Only Adam Parrish, unfortunately,” he answers in a hushed voice because it’s the middle of the night and he’s not drunk to not care about the silence. 

“That is good enough,” Ronan mumbles and sits on the ground, away from Adam. “The fuck are you doing here?”

Adam looks at him curiously. _Trying to sleep,_ he thinks. He remembers how hot his room is and wonders if opening windows worked. There will be so many mosquitoes there, again.

“I live here.”

“In the church? So you actually are a God?” Ronan is feeling funny today. Adam doesn’t think he ever heard him say so many words before, but then he doesn’t think he ever tried talking to the guy either. 

“Why are you alone?” 

“Kavinsky got so annoying. Unbe-... Unrebab-... Couldn’t stand him anymore. So I fucked off there.” Adam raises his brow and Ronan grins, baring his white teeth. His eyes are not moving, piercing through Adam like steel, _dangerous._ “What? Want to maybe say something?”

“If you want me to be surprised you’re hanging out with this piece of shit, then I’m not really.” Ronan laughs in this unnerving manner, obviously pleased. “The hell is wrong with you?”

“I was _born_ like that.”

“No, you were not.”

“Oh, so you know me now?”

“I only see you coming to class, looking even more like shit every week if you even bother to fucking appear.”

Ronan huffs. “It’s sweet you notice,” he mocks, but Adam doesn’t bother to reply. The whole situation is surreal and he wonders for a second if it’s not just a hallucination, Ronan standing here for God knows what reason. He doesn’t even know why he bothers talking to him, clearly drunk out of his mind, likely to forget in the morning they even met.

Ronan’s swaying on his feet before he falls on the ground, reeking of alcohol. They sit in silence, only Adam’s watch ticking. He glances at it. Six hours fifteen minutes of sleep. The other boy catches this gesture and tries to stand up. “Yep, nice to meet you too, Parrish. Got to go now.”

“You live far?” 

“I left the car… somewhere,” Ronan says, gesturing around them. Adam is suddenly wide awake. 

“The hell you did not. You’re hardly standing on your feet.”

Ronan shoots him an amused look. “Well, then it looks like I’ll just sleep here. That will be great. I’ll just wait for my brothers to wake me up on their way to the mass.”

“Come on. No, really, come.” Adam is too tired for Ronan’s terrible jokes. He stands up and doesn’t even look to see if Ronan follows him, doesn’t even know why he invited him to his shithole of a room. “Are you fucking yourself up on purpose?”

“Yes.” Ronan’s voice is quieter now, closer to Adam. He’s standing on his right side and Adam briefly wonders if he knows he doesn’t hear on the other. 

Ronan stands still when Adam helps him take off the leather jacket until Adam tells him to _fucking relax_ and moves away to take off his shirt before going to bed. It’s still hot as hell inside. Ronan falls asleep on the blanket Adam throws him and finally, Adam falls asleep too, too tired to think about why he even let that boy in. He looks like trouble, like nothing good happened to him or around him in a long time and like he didn’t even mind he was miserable. 

***

He expected him to be gone in the morning. When Ronan is still laying on the floor after Adam wakes up, he’s too surprised to wonder whether he’s glad he stayed. 

“Morning,” he mumbles to Ronan, who’s laying on his back and staring at the ceiling. His eyes are red and he looks sickly, skin under his eyes purple and blemishes on his hollow cheeks. Somewhen in the night, he lost his shirt and Adam can see how skinny he got in those past months, where used to be some muscles from playing tennis and running now only pale skin and bones. And the tattoo, he notices, creeping up his neck. 

“Why were you nice to me?” He sounds hollow now, tired as much as Adam the night before. _That’s_ exactly what Adam expected when he thought he was trouble. He didn’t mind annoying Lynch, the one that’s swearing or being mean, that would just vanish in the morning without saying as much as thank you, but he doesn’t think he can spare energy to be somebody’s emotional support. 

“I didn’t want you to drive drunk.” Adam stands up and puts on his jeans, laying on the floor next to his bed. “You okay?”

“I’m fucked up.” 

“I noticed. Alcohol won’t solve your problems, though.” Ronan snickers but Adam shakes his head and says more firmly, “no, really. It’s a depressant. No wonder you feel even worse now. You texted your parents you’re not coming home or should I expect cops at my door?”

“Smartass. I don’t live with your parents.” He sighs and dugs his phone from his back pocket then throws it at Adam. “Please text Gansey.”

“You have a hangover?”

“No.” 

“Do you want to go grab breakfast?” Ronan nods and gets up. He throws Adam a t-shirt. It’s identical to the one Adam wore yesterday and that he has in his hands now, ready to put it on: washed red and too big, with a Coca-Cola logo printed on it. “Where did you get that?”

“Dreamt it,” Ronan says, an answer Adam didn’t expect and he’s not sure how to respond to. 

“Getting to know someone has honestly never been weirder for me.” Adam stares at him, dumbfounded.

“Love to hear that,” Ronan says. “That’s exactly what I want people to think of me.” 

Adam doesn’t even want to wonder if he’s being serious.

***

“What are you looking at?” 

Adam shrugs. “Do you even eat?” He’s looking at the stack of waffles in front of Ronan that he hasn’t even touched.

“No, I went all-in with fucking up my health.” He takes a small piece of waffle but stops abruptly after a moment with a fork halfway to his mouth. “I don’t do drugs.” 

Adam frowns. “I didn’t say you were.” 

“Just in case you were thinking it. I’m not friends with Kavinsky, either, he was just…” He gestures vaguely. 

“Yeah, you’re hanging out because he’s a great conversationalist.” Ronan snickers. “What did you need from him, then? Fake ID?”

“Nah, got my own.” Adam raises his brow. “Dreamt it.” “It wasn’t funny even the first time.”

“It’s not a joke.”

Adam sighs. He’s poking at his eggs, wondering if he should let Ronan pay for them, which he’s sure he’ll try to do. Would they be even for letting him sleep at Adam’s place? Should Ronan even owe him? He slept on a floor, in a room that’s basically a purgatory, and hit his head twice when he stood up abruptly in the morning. 

He sips on his coffee, hoping it will wake him up. He hasn’t slept a full night in _months_ and he longs for eight hours of sleep. Adam wishes he could lay unconscious, dream about something different than reading a book or running away, legs heavy and everything around him pale grey and even more depressing than his normal life. He’s so tired half the time he forgets what he’s doing, sleepwalking around but fully awake. 

“What?” He tunes out all the noise around him, even though the buzzing in his left ear still doesn’t fully go away, and focuses his eyes on Ronan. “You were saying?” 

“Why’d you let me sleep at yours?”

Adam hears his heart pounding annoyingly, caffeine kicking in. Ronan looks at him expectantly, like he wants to hear something _smart,_ something you’d think Adam Parrish would say - that his decision was thought through, not made on a whim because he was too tired to think but not enough to let Ronan crash into the nearest tree. 

“I already told you, this morning, remember? You don’t take up too much space,” he says after a moment of consideration. “Were you driving Gansey’s car?”

“Why?” Ronan eyes him suspiciously which answers Adam’s question. 

“I thought he never let you take it.”

“How do you know that?”

“I heard you argue once.” He immediately regrets mentioning it, admitting to watching both of them from afar, so he changes the subject. “What the hell were you doing then with Kavinsky?”

“What wouldn’t I be doing with him?”

“He’s bad news.” 

“So am I.”

“No, you’re just an idiot,” he says, annoyed. He regards Ronan, his sharp face and piercing blue eyes, jutting collarbones and elbows, bony wrists with leather bands around rosy pink scars marring his arms. Adam reaches for his wrist and turns it so Ronan’s scars are facing them. “You’re depressed, not a psychopath.”

He brushes his thumb along the scar. Ronan looks at him and his eyes are different, scared, and wide now. He snatches his hand out of Adam’s hold and puts it around his stomach. “You let me crash at yours once and suddenly you know what I am? Fuck off, Parrish, you’re not going to psychoanalyze me right now.”

“I’m not, I don’t care enough.” Adam knows he’s being mean, but he can’t help himself. He probably shouldn’t have said that, but Adam has no idea what he’s doing in the first place. He was never good with feelings. “That’s why you’re sitting here still?”

“That’s why you came at fucking 1 a.m. to stand under my window so that I don’t talk to you at all? Are you honestly expecting me to pat you on the head? Come on,” he says and Ronan raises his head. The bruise under Adam’s eye is healing, but the skin is still yellow in places and slightly darker than the other one. He doesn’t know why he does it, after a year of spending every second hiding bruises, his accent and the whole miserable family life and his trailer heritage, poor clothes, and how there is nothing he can talk about with the rest of the Aglionby boys. There’s probably no need to act around Ronan, who still smells vaguely of vodka and cigarette smoke and whose lips are chapped and skin sallow. 

“I was going to church,” he answers faintly, unable to tear his gaze away from Adam. 

“Sure you were.” 

Ronan breathes heavily and stands up. “I really have to go to church now.” 

“Better change your clothes first.”

His hands shake as he’s standing above Adam. “Drive me home?”

***

“I actually can’t go there.”

Ronan leans on the wardrobe door, hand in his palms. They’re in his room. Adam looks around it and decides it’s the most chaotic thing he’s seen in his life, random suspiciously looking things laying around; three cuckoo clocks in neons hanging on the wall, empty tank with a stuffed golden fish in it, plant with a weird glowing bubble around it and _a raven,_ actual living thing, that’s sitting on Ronan’s arm now, head tucked close to his neck. Noah sits cross-legged on Ronan’s desk, looking almost translucent with his pale complexion, and faintly sparkling with glitter. He’s so small and boyish next to Gansey, who’s standing next to him with his arms crossed and biting on his lip, the only adult in the room it seems. 

“Should I call Declan?” he asks. 

Gansey didn’t even ask what Adam is doing here. He let them in without a word, made coffee, and sat them all in one room as if he immediately decided he’s the least of a fuck up in the house so he might as well play the parent. 

“You probably should.” Gansey leaves the room, phone already by his ear.

Noah turns to Adam. He smiles and reaches to him with his hand. “I’m Noah.”

“I know,” Adam says, but shakes his hand. Ronan groans.

“Be less fucking obvious with the fact that you were stalking us.”

“We have classes together.” Adam turns to Ronan. “It was you who stalked me to my _home._ ”

“I went to church.”

“Sure you did,” Adam snarls. Noah looks at them curiously. 

“You didn’t know each other before?”

“No?” Adam expected Noah to know Ronan’s friends, seeing as Noah was one of the only two Ronan seemed to have. 

“Ronan spoke of you.”

Ronan groans at that. “Shut your mouth, Czerny.”

“You did.”

“About _Latin,_ for fuck’s sake.” 

Adam wants to be interested in it, but he’s almost falling asleep on his feet. Ronan took at least an hour of his already scarce sleep time last night and he can’t make himself care when he can barely focus. He’s tense and annoyed and doesn’t trust himself he won’t snap at one of the boys in a moment. 

That’s the downside of having someone to talk to, that suddenly you can easily make them hate you because you can’t manage your frustration with everything around you. 

“Can I go to sleep here?” he hears himself asking and, well, now that he said it he may as well go through with it. Ronan blinks at him, taking his whole form in. 

“Yeah, Parrish, go to sleep,” he says. “Some asshole’s probably kept you up all night.”

“Wonder who that was,” Adam murmurs and lays down, already dozing off. 

He feels Ronan’s bird on his arm before he falls asleep. 

***

“What are you doing?” 

Adam almost jumps out of his skin. Ronan stares at him, leaning on the doorframe. He’s popped in a few times already, Adam at this point not sure if he forgets to close the door or if Ronan just managed to pick a lock, but manages to scare the life out of Adam each time. 

“Laundry. Please knock, you asshole.”

“Who would it be if not me?” “Yes, Lynch, rub it in my face that I have no friends.” 

Ronan blushes slightly, although Adam doesn’t notice in this light. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he says and Adam rolls his eyes. “It’s midnight.”

“And?” Adam turns to him. “I’m just folding my clothes. You can help me if you already decide to invite yourself into my life.”

Ronan wants to tell him _I can leave if you’re so bothered,_ but Adam would probably just agree and never talk to him again. So instead, he says, “You want me to organize your boxers?”, trying for a joking tone, but it never works for him when he’s sober in the first place and it surely doesn’t work when he’s scared of folding Adam’s underwear, because that might put in his mind some thoughts that should definitely not be there. 

Ronan might have developed some obsession with Adam, which was fine when he was only watching him in a school, hypnotized with his uniqueness, intelligence, the raw look that Ronan desperately wanted. Now it’s only extremely inconvenient when he’s met the real thing instead of just the product of his imagination, and the real Adam proved to be even better than he thought and uninterested in Ronan. 

“Be useful for something.” 

So Ronan is, thanking God for the bad lighting in the room that hides the faint blush on his face. 

***

“God, just go to sleep.”

Adam puts a palm on Ronan’s cheek and raises his head. He looks into Ronan’s bloodshot eyes. Dark circles under his eyes make him look ill and his skin is sickly pale. He looks like a junkie and maybe he is, despite what he said, Adam’s not sure, suddenly realizing he barely knows the boy. 

He’s getting himself into so much trouble. The very thought of Ronan gives him a headache with how bad this can go. He looks at him again, blue eyes sunken and tired, a scowl permanently on his face, and wishes the biggest trouble this boy could give him is a broken heart. 

Yet here they are, sitting opposite each other on his mattress, in his awful room that suits Ronan’s severely sleep-deprived malnourished drug addict aesthetic just slightly too well. And he’s patting his cheek, stubble rough under his palm, cradling his face like a lovesick worried boyfriend like he didn’t just meet Ronan. Met him and instantly fell in love, which he’d realize if he let himself think about his emotions for more than three seconds. 

Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t think about it. It might be just his mile deep issues developed thanks to his god awful father speaking. What do they say about falling in love with men that remind you of your dad?

“You go to sleep.” 

“I have to finish homework,” Adam says and takes his hand away. 

“You’re not impressive, you know,” Ronan says, his speech a bit slurred. “With your idiotic work ethics. Unless you want to have a fucking heart attack before you’re thirty. Or a mental breakdown.”

“I don’t have time for mental breakdowns,” Adam interrupts him and Ronan laughs. At least they’re compatible with their terrible sense of humor. 

“Go to sleep, Parrish,” he says. Adam does, thirty minutes later, after he finishes the homework. 

He strips off his clothes and lays down next to Ronan who apparently doesn’t care anymore, not about his or Adam’s comfort on the too-small mattress, still in his jeans and T-shirt. 

“Are you sleeping like this?”

“You want to see me naked, sweetheart?”

“Oh yes,” Adam says, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “I wish I could see those impressive muscles of yours. Must be a great source of energy for your body seeing as you never fucking eat.”

Ronan turns abruptly, props himself on his elbow. 

“I just love when I’m lectured on taking care of myself by someone who’s barely functioning. I haven’t seen you eat once, except for those few bites of breakfast since we met.” Ronan looks a bit panicked at his words. “Yeah, asshole, I noticed. Didn’t want to mention seeing as you didn’t like me psychoanalyzing you, but honestly, Lynch, what are you even doing? Is that why you avoid Gansey and sleep here all the time? How long do you think you can live on alcohol and whatever else you take?”

“I don’t do that shit,” Ronan says firmly. “I told you already, asshole. I’m fucked up, but I don’t do drugs.”

“Congratulations, then.”

Ronan lays down. Adam is pleased he didn’t run away, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he did. 

“You can’t play my fucking therapist,” he says in a hushed tone after a moment of silence. 

“I’m not intending to,” Adam assures him. He doesn’t and he doesn’t want Ronan to play his, either. He’s not even sure if he cares enough yet, only knows he definitely shouldn’t, a voice in his head telling him all the time: _he’s trouble and you didn’t get away from one unstable asshole to find yourself another._

“Whatever,” Ronan mumbles, turns his back to Adam. Doesn’t move to sleep on the floor anymore, either.

***

Gansey starts inviting Adam out, adopting him into their little group as if it’s not a ridiculous situation that they have, as Ronan points out. 

“Dick is playing dad, now,” he mock-whispers to Adam when they’re sitting in Monmouth, playing cards one of the evenings Adam’s free to hang out. Life’s even more difficult now when he has to squeeze friends into his schedule. “I’m the shitty child that’s rebelling and now he has to adopt my friend because you’re a much better option than Kavinsky.”

Adam doesn’t mind, anyway. Life got busier for him, but the school’s so much better and easier when there’s finally someone that likes him. Other boys stopped looking down on him since he has friends. 

And he genuinely likes Gansey, who turns out to be much more eccentric once Adam got to know him, even if he’s sometimes infuriating with his lack of knowledge about the real world outside of his books. There’s Noah, too, who’s the sweetest person Adam’s ever met, not even Ronan able to be an asshole to him. Blue, that after a rocky start when Gansey managed to offend her without even trying somehow started hanging out with them anyway, seems to have formed a bond with Noah instantly. 

It’s nice, even more so because all of them have the mind not to tease him or Ronan about the weird dynamic they have. For one, that they barely knew each other a month before and now they’re unusually for both of them close. Ronan keeps sleeping at Adam’s and pops into his work unannounced, somehow both of them comfortable with each other, when no one forces either to share trauma or making them feel bad for their terrible lifestyle. 

Or about the fact that they might stare at each other with longing, touch all the time and blush occasionally, unusual for both. Their friends let them be and they’re alright with doing nothing about it.

***

“Do I look like I care about any party? I’m probably not invited either way.” Blue glares at him pissed off. Gansey tries to calm her, puts a hand on her shoulder, but she shakes him off. 

“Very funny, Ronan, didn’t notice your fantastic sense of humor before,” she snarls, leaning on the table. “I’d joke all about politics, too, you know, if I were privileged enough I could give no fucks about that.” 

He snorts, baring his teeth. Adam groans and leans into his side a bit and at least Ronan doesn’t flinch, even relaxes into his side slightly, thigh pressing on Adam’s thigh, and feet shaking under the table, although that might be the result of the ungodly amount of coffee he started drinking since he started hanging out with Adam. 

“Privileged?” 

“Yeah, maybe you’re not?” Blue is furious now. Adam doesn’t even know how they got to this point in a conversation. “You’re too busy to care about politics because none of that concerns you. Maybe look around you and think about how it may affect others.” She glares at Adam. “Don’t put in the middle of your arguments, Blue.” He wants to agree with her, but not today after he’s barely slept eight hours in the last three days. She snorts, annoyance dripping from her voice. 

“Comfortable to just ignore everything, is it?” 

“What do you want from me? You want my perfect life? Fucking take it, go on,” he says, voice low, pressing even harder into Adam. 

“God, yes, maybe I’d like to live off of my parents’ money and waste my time on racing cars and drinking myself to death.” Gansey raises his head, panic in his eyes, when Ronan suddenly stands up, muttering “I can’t deal with it now” under his breath. He tries to go after him, but Noah gestures to him to stay. 

“Maybe it’d be better for Adam to get him,” he says calmly, the first thing he’s said since the beginning of this conversation. Noah never takes part in arguments, just looks at them with his big eyes after they finish like a frightened child with screaming parents. Adam wants him to go to Ronan, calm him down, and take inside like he knows Noah can and has done before. 

Gansey and Noah are looking at him expectantly, so he gets up without a word and steps outside. Adam pulls his jacket tighter around himself to shield from the cold air and searches for Ronan around. He spots him sitting on the hood of his car, feet in black boots hanging in the air. 

“Are you alright?” It’s a stupid question, he knows, but Adam was never good at this and it doesn’t seem like he’ll start being soon. It only works with Ronan because he won’t tell him he is, when it’s obvious he’s as far from fine as possible, he’s been not fine since the night he stumbled drunk to Adam’s room at least. 

He shakes his head. 

Adam climbs up to sit next to him, car sinking a bit under their weight. Ronan’s not crying, which is a relief for Adam, but his eyes are red and he can’t look in his face, staring straight ahead. “I know she is right,” he starts, words coming hard to him. Adam nods, still baffled with the whole argument. He has no idea what Ronan wanted out of it, Adam knows he does care about politics, has more or less the same views Blue does. They talked about it before, although Adam suspects it’s not the first choice of the conversation topic with Ronan. 

Sometimes he has no idea what Ronan is doing. He disagrees with people just for the sake of making somebody angry, saying what he doesn’t mean, just to make himself appear like he doesn’t care. It goes poor more often than not, especially when it’s times like this when Ronan knows damn well how much Blue cares about it.

“I know I am an insensitive asshole, alright, sorry I don’t care about fucking _social justice_ enough. But I can’t just sit there, listen to somebody talk like my life’s all perfect because…” 

Adam stays silent, staring at his knees, fingers interlaced. He wonders if he should touch Ronan, but somehow he doubts any of them would appreciate it right now. 

“Noah told you to come?” He turns to peek at Adam who nods. Then he turns away from him again. “He’s… Well, he’s disturbingly good at knowing what’s in your head,” he says absently and Adam understands what he’s talking about. “He told me the whole “I never lie” is a pile of bullshit. I mean, that’s not what he said, exactly, but that’s what he meant. That not telling people stuff is lying as well. And also that I’m hurting you when I hide everything about myself.” 

He’s shaking slightly. It’s different from anything Adam’s seen from him, the wall he built around himself cracking now, in the parking lot behind pizzeria, other boys from Aglionby laughing drunk somewhere around. Somehow he’s more vulnerable like this than he was drunk, unconscious and almost naked on the floor, more than when he showed him his old drawings or started laughing around him. 

“It feels fucking stupid to make some big confession,” he says awkwardly and looks at Adam, expecting him to say something, maybe _you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,_ which would be enough to act as if he cares but would also be equal to Ronan shutting up and probably never speaking about his life again. 

Ronan reminds him of a matryoshka that sat on his mother’s shelf. There are hundreds of different versions he pulls and after each one, Adam stops believing he’ll manage to get to the core of Ronan. They are similar in this aspect; heavily guarded, unwilling to let people know anything behind the surface. This is maybe as close as it gets. “Please do.”

He takes a deep breath. “I… First of all, Gansey would tell you I used to be different, but it’s honestly a lie, I was always this way. He tries to act like I was a fucking ray of sunshine before all the shit went down, but I really was not that more _pleasant_ to be around.” His chews on his leather band absently, and then thinks of something and stops. “I found my father dead which is probably what fucked me up so much. Well, that’s basically it.” 

Adam grabs Ronan’s shaking hand. “He was murdered. My mom shut down immediately and we have no idea what happened.” He wiggles his hand out of Adam’s grip to take off the bracelets. “I know, I know I fucked up, I shouldn’t have done that and it was selfish,” he says, his voice shaky, looking at the pink scars on his forearms, and stops Adam before he has a chance to tell him it’s not selfish and to _never say it again,_ “Noah found me and I think I scared the shit out of him, too. And I did so much else to piss everyone off, all the nights when I didn’t sleep, getting drunk, not eating for days, racing, fucking _Kavinsky,”_ he sputters, distaste dripping from his voice. “I don’t do that since I met you, though.” 

Adam doesn’t want to focus on the Kavinsky part, but he still doesn’t know what there was between them and he can’t help being curious. It feels selfish. 

What he also doesn’t want to focus on is Ronan talking about all that in the past tense, like it’s all and well now, like he’s barely above the surface, barely managing to be stable but all the time on the verge of breaking down and going down to the bad habits. As if he isn’t skipping meals still and being reckless with everything he does. 

Adam wishes he could fix Ronan.

He can’t help focusing on all that when he remembers the bruises on Ronan’s pale skin and suddenly it makes sense that he’d let somebody do it to him, let Kavinsky of all people. And he’s not sure if he’s madder at himself or Ronan, because he was there all the time and he could love Ronan properly if he let him. 

“I want to help you,” he says, softly, when he understands Ronan won’t tell him more, at least not now. 

“It’s not on you.” Ronan scoots closer to him, pressing into his side. “You have just as much going on, Parrish, I’m not your kid. I don’t want to make you hate me because you must take care of me.”

“I won’t hate you.” He’s trying to put as much certainty into his voice as possible. Ronan smirks.

“Well, you’re not Gansey.” Adam feels the sting of that, but Ronan is right. “Do you suddenly want me to talk about your shitty life?”

“No,” Adam answers immediately. 

“Exactly.” Ronan nudges his shoulder. “That’s enough fucking feelings for today.”

***

Adam’s not sure how they wound up here, again in his dark room, barely any sun getting in through dirty windows. Old curtains hang in them, looking pathetically, mocking Adam who can’t even spare money to change them, to make it look less miserably inside. Ronan doesn’t seem to care much about this; he never does, probably the reason his room is equally messy, just in a different way, with paintings Ronan made drunk on walls and everything he pulled from his dream. 

Adam’s not sure how they wound up here, only that they were supposed to leave his bag and leave to meet Blue, Gansey, and Noah, plan long forgotten after Ronan noticed _Alice in Wonderland_ laying on the shelf, sat on the floor and hasn’t moved since. 

He stared at him; blank look on his face and bloodshot eyes firmly on a ceiling. Adam sat beside him and texted Gansey they might not make it, fully aware by now that Ronan can sit there for an hour without uttering a word to him, lost in his thoughts, or maybe just not wanting Adam to know them. 

“This doesn’t hurt as bad as it used to be.’ Adam startles. He turns to Ronan, curled on the floor beside his mattress, head turned to look at him. It’s a cue for him to move, sit next to Ronan, close enough he could touch him if he reached with his hand but leaving space for him to make a decision. 

Ronan budges, almost unnoticeable, to get just a little bit closer. They’re not touching, but there is barely any space left between their knees. Ronan smells like grass and air after a rain, so different from other boys with their expensive and heavy cologne, and Adam is tempted to come even closer to him, put a hand on Ronan’s cheek, mouth, keep him close enough to make him better. 

“What?” Adam’s voice is barely above a whisper. 

“My dad,” Ronan answers softly and Adam wonders what the book meant for him and his father. “It was so bad when we met, even after over a year. It’s… I’m not good at talking, Adam.”

“You’re alright.” Ronan chuckles at his comment.

“Yeah, I sure fucking am. I think I owe you.” Adam wants to interrupt him but Ronan is faster. “For making me slightly less fucked up. I should probably be in therapy and I would have been in rehab right now if I didn’t meet you.”

“You didn’t _meet_ me, you stumbled drunk into my flat and asked if I’m God.”

Adam feels transparent now with his affection. He reaches to Ronan to brush his shaved head. That’s the moment Ronan breaks. 

“I’m so tired of this anger. I didn’t use to be like that when I was young but now, now it’s all I can feel sometimes.” He’s moving closer, slowly until his head is just an inch from Adam’s chest. Adam finally moves his palm to the back of Ronan’s neck and pulls him closer, Ronan’s ear to his beating heart, tangled awkwardly. “Love is so dumb. Sometimes I wish I didn’t love him, or my mother, that this would be so much easier.”

“It’s not.”

“I know.” Ronan sniffles, arms going shyly around Adam’s waist, grabbing the back of his t-shirt. “I think Declan hates him and I still don’t think it’s easy for him, to think of his father’s brain splattered on the wall. Maybe it’s even worse.”

They sit in the silence for a while. There’s nothing Adam can say to this and Ronan doesn’t expect him to say anything, same as there was nothing he could say to Adam about his father beating the hearing out of his ear and making him live alone when he’s barely eighteen. They’re sitting in each other’s embrace and Adam wonders how they must look. Ridiculously. Ronan, in his ripped jeans and combat boots, looking only a bit less intimidating than always, in Adam’s embrace, Adam that’s maybe his height but still more scrawny, freckled, and with badly cut hair the color of straw. Holding Ronan is so different from holding tiny Noah, who fits perfectly into everybody’s arms, or Blue, softer under touch even if she’d never let anyone admit it. It’s more awkward but somehow accurate. It makes sense for Ronan to be here, with his head under Adam’s chin. 

“I wish I could say all that I have going on in my head,” he says quietly. 

“Are we still talking about your dad?” Ronan shakes his head. 

“I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want you to leave.”

“I don’t want to, either,” Adam says without making clear which one he means. He rubs circles on Ronan’s neck and wonders what to do with all of those feelings, that Ronan and the rest of the boys and Blue might all have been a bad idea. “What are you afraid of?”

Ronan raises his head, still holding Adam and being held by him and closes the distance left. His lips are chapped and his cheek is wet with tears when Adam puts his palm on it, surprisingly not startled by the kiss. He opens his mouth only a bit and kisses Ronan slowly before he pulls away. Their foreheads are still touching, both of them unable to separate, so starved for touch, maybe even more for this feeling of skin under their fingertips, another person’s body close, the warmth of each other’s breath, than for the kiss itself. 

Then Adam tilts his head and reaches for Ronan’s lips again.

***

“Leave with me.” Adam nudges Ronan with his arm, sitting pressed close to him on a bench. 

Henry’s telling some ridiculous story again, Blue laughing loudly, feet in Gansey’s lap. They’re not looking at Ronan and Adam, pointedly acting as if they don’t notice whatever is going on with them, some doing better job at this than others. (Gansey might have approached him a few days after they first kissed to tell Adam to be careful with Ronan as if Adam was capable of hurting him). 

“Gladly.” Ronan leans into him, casual with touch as he was for the past weeks. Adam’s never not ecstatic every time Ronan hugs him comfortably, kisses him on the forehead, hooks their ankles together unconsciously when they’re laying on the ground. It’s wonderful to touch him whenever he wants to, and he never ceases to want to. “Where?”

“I mean, the city.” Adam shrugs. “When I go to uni.”

Ronan looks at him, a smile spreading on his face. “You won’t be annoyed with me?” 

“Well, actually…” Ronan laughs, cheerful. “I mean, really, Lynch. What do you think?”

“I thought it’s obvious I’m going with you. Just tell me where we’re going and when I have to find someone to look after cows.” Adam almost bursts with happiness, grabs Ronan’s face, and kisses him, startling another laugh out of him and almost making them fall from the bench. 

He knows neither of them is alright, but he also knows they’re not ready to face it now. Ronan still barely eats, gets drunk too often, and has days when he won’t get up from the bed. Adam doesn’t let himself rest and can’t tell Ronan much about his life before they met. 

He thinks about Ronan, laying on the floor of St Agnes, his shirt off and smiling, his eyes sparkling when he says, “Adam,” with a laugh, and then a quiet and shaky, “ _Adam,”_ when he presses his hands on the back of Adam’s neck, pulls him closer, legs on Adam’s back, breathless. 

Blue catches his eye, smiling brightly, and Ronan ruffles his hair and kisses him on the head. Adam thinks that maybe it’s all good enough for now. 


End file.
